Pitching was the biggest question for the San Diego State baseball team coming into the season.

Fifty-four games later the Aztecs are set to host the five-day Mountain West Conference Tournament and nothing has changed.

At one time or another, all three of SDSU’s weekend starters were lost to injuries: No. 1 starter Addison Reed missed three weeks after the right-hander fractured the pinkie on his pitching hand in mid-March on a comebacker against Santa Clara; No. 2 Ryan O’Sullivan hasn’t pitched since the first inning of his first start against Oklahoma because of arm pain; and two weeks ago No. 3 Bryan Crabb was lost for the remainder of the season when he suffered a cracked skull from a line drive at BYU.

The third-seeded Aztecs (28-26) open play today against sixth-seeded Utah (22-26) in the double-elimination tournament. The winner receives the conference’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament, which is SDSU’s only shot of reaching the postseason. The Aztecs don’t have a strong enough record to earn an at-large berth as they did last year.

Playing anywhere from four to seven games is required to take the title. Gwynn so far has identified one of his starting pitchers — Reed, who was 8-1 this season with a 2.33 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 73.1 innings.

“We’ve got Addy on Tuesday and then … uhhhhhh … I don’t know,” Gwynn said. “After Tuesday, then we’ll see what we’re going to do on Wednesday. I’ve got some cards in the deck that I could play, but I hesitate to show them.”

SDSU started no fewer than 13 pitchers in its 54 games this season. Four of them were freshmen, including Crabb, who led the staff with 13 starts. The other three — Corey Black, Ethan Miller and Matthew McDaniel — figure prominently this week. They will welcome all the help they can get from SDSU’s hitters.

“Here’s the optimist speaking,” Gwynn said. “We’ve got a pretty good offensive club. If we can score some runs, anything could happen.”

Utah proved anything can happen last year when it upset BYU, TCU (twice) and SDSU (twice) to become the first No. 6 seed to win the tournament championship.

But that is quite an exception. The top seed has won six of the 10 times the tournament has been held. This season, top-seeded TCU, ranked No. 6 in the nation, and second-seeded New Mexico have been the class of the conference.

“TCU and New Mexico are both solid — with pitching,” Gwynn said. “New Mexico might be the best offensive team in the country, and they’ve got arms. TCU has good arms, three legit guys. And they both get to rest a day.